A FORDINGBRIDGE author has launched a new book uncovering the history of Hampshire’s space rocket for the very first time.

Robin Brand, who is an electronics engineer, delves into to the full history of the Skylark rocket in his book, Britain’s First Space Rocket: The Story of the Skylark, which will be available to buy from tomorrow.

The Skylark rocket was designed and built in Hampshire and the book reveals how in November 1957 it became the first British rocket to reach space.

The 67-year-old, who worked in Salisbury for more than 20 years and is now semi-retired, said: "These days few have heard of the Skylark rocket, yet over a 48-year career hundreds were fired, launching into space thousands of instruments that made pioneering observations of the Earth, Sun, stars and galaxies.”

The book has taken more than six years to write and is based on Mr Brand’s many years of original research, which involved searching through national archives.

“It was a subject I was interested in and I discovered no-one else had written about it,” he added. “It is an untold story that I thought would be interesting to tell people about.”

Many of the 740 archive photographs and figures have never been published before.

It is also the first time Mr Brand has published a book, but he says he has no plans at the moment to write another one.

The book has been self-published through his New Forest Electronics company and will be available from Fordingbridge Bookshop or by visiting ypdbooks.com. For more information about the book visit nfel.co.uk/skylark-book.htm